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Cool NYC Condo Just $1,136!

Fred Bernstein — 2010-03-17T16:40:00 00:00

Once upon a time, owning a piece of 56 Leonard Street - a condo tower designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron - would have set you back at least $3.5 million.

Today, the building sold on-line for just over $1,000.

The item unloaded on eBay was a 20-inch model of the tower, "made as as a sales tool for brokers to help demonstrate the position of each unit" in the building, according to Richard Pandiscio, who handled marketing for Alexico, the developer of 56 Leonard. The models were made of 120 individually engraved Lucite pieces, which could be taken apart and then put back together.

But the building itself was never put together. These days, 56 Leonard is an empty lot.

And the Lucite models were gathering dust in brokers' offices.

The models were nominally part of an edition of 300, but Pandiscio doesn't think more than 100 were ever made. The seller was anonymous, as was the buyer, who paid $1,136 in a last-minute bid.

Herzog and de Meuron weren't the only starchitects to design ill-fated Manhattan condo buildings -- another one, by Rem Koolhaas, was supposed to rise on 23rd Street. It, too, is stalled. But all kinds of promotional materials - including, yes, plastic models - were made and distributed before the developer pulled the plug.

Don't be surprised if those models start turning up at auction, too.

In fact, these days, eBay may be the best place to see a condo bidding war.

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Fixing a Hole Left by Starchitect Calatrava

Fred Bernstein — 2010-02-18T12:44:00 00:00

Filed under: Design,Lifestyle

What to do about Chicago's embarrassing Big Dig?

The Chicago Spire, a 150-story tower condo tower, was designed by Santiago Calatrava for a site overlooking Lake Michigan. The cocky, corkscrew shaped building was expected to cost more than $1 billion, which, even for Calatrava (whose projects have been known to go over budget), was a lot. But the developers ran out of money, and all they have to show for their efforts is a giant hole -- 76 feet deep and 110 feet in diameter -- in the ground. (Calatrava says he is owed more than $11 million for his design work.)

So what's to become of the hole, a literal architectural depression? The Chicago Architectural Club is asking architects (and architecture students) to put on their spire-shaped thinking caps. "Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward?" asked the Club, announcing an international competition. Blair Kamin, a Chicago architecture critic, asked the same question on his blog last year, and the answers came pouring in. (Responses included: a scuba diving tank; "pudding"; the Obama presidential library)

The Club will accept entries until May 3, after which a panel of judges (including star Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, designer of a new and beloved condo tower called Aqua) will choose the winners.

The competition is named Mine the Gap, though they could have lifted a title from the Guggenheim Museum's current show, Contemplating the Void.

The first place winner will receive $3,500. No word yet on whether Calatrava plans to enter.

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I Want This House: Marfa Edition

Fred Bernstein — 2010-01-08T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design,Lifestyle

I want this house, for three reasons: Location, location, and location.

Or maybe I should just say: Marfa, Marfa, Marfa. I'm referring to the tiny town in West Texas that's hard to get to, and even harder to leave.

There's something about Marfa -- about the light, the air, the landscape -- that artists find irresistible (but also, sadly for those who haven't been there, indescribable). Donald Judd, the minimalist sculptor, arrived in 1971, and stayed. His works fill several large industrial buildings in the center of town, and hundreds of acres on the outskirts.

Every object Judd created has a stunning simplicity.

This house is listed for $180,000 -- about average for Marfa. (There aren't a lot of comparables in a town of just 2,100 people.) If I bought it, I would try to give it a Judd-ian simplicity. So it doesn't matter that I'm not crazy about the house's faux-colonial decor. I like its solidity, its symmetry. And what I don't like would be easy to remove.
I don't believe in tear-downs. This would be a tear-out.

I already know someone who could help me. Barbara Hill, a Houston interior designer, has a weekend house in Marfa. It used to be a dance hall; now it's a single, serene living space that feels uncluttered and elegant. Barbara stripped it down to bare essentials. (See below.)

Barbara estimated that it would cost $100,000 to gut the house, plaster its walls and ceilings, and install second-hand fixtures. (It's hard for her to be more specific about the price; because she never knows exactly what she'll find behind a wall or cabinet, her work involves a bit of improvisation.)

With Marfa's magic -- and a little bit of Barbara's -- this could be the house of my dreams.

In my mind, it already is.

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Would You Live in a 5-Foot Condo? Some Japanese Do

Fred Bernstein — 2010-01-05T14:28:00 00:00

Filed under: Design

You think you've got it bad?

Japan is enduring its worst recession in decades. So what can you rent in Tokyo for $640 a month during the downturn? Not an apartment, but a berth -- a tiny shelf in a "capsule hotel."

Built for "salarymen" who missed the last train home after staying out drinking, capsule hotels are now the homes of last resort for Japan's unemployed, according to the New York Times. Each 6 1/2-foot by 5-foot "room" contains a bed, a TV, and a pair of coat hooks. So what if the place looks like a microwave oven museum? For the hundred or so Japanese who rent the cubicles long term, it beats living on the streets.

Cubbyhole-living may sound rather drastic to most Americans, even those losing their homes. The American dream house isn't a capsule -- it's the whole hotel.
By contrast, the Japanese -- even those with jobs -- are often willing to live in surprisingly tight quarters. Apartments of just 108 square feet (the size of 6 tatami mats) are common. And even when Japanese families move up, they're often content with compact houses. That has given architects the chance to experiment with buildings that would seem perversely small by American standards.

Japan isn't the only place where architects are fascinated with the idea of tiny, modular "machines for living." One Russian firm has developed a "napping booth" designed for city streets. Called Sleepbox, it includes a mechanism that changes the linens automatically between uses. Meanwhile, a company called Minute Suites has unveiled its own version of a capsule hotel in Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport.

But permanent homes smaller than SUVs will never appeal to Americans. So when the Japanese bunk down in tiny capsules, here, in the land of doublewides and McMansions, it's news.

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Sold in the U.S.A.

Fred Bernstein — 2010-01-04T11:46:00 00:00

Filed under: Lifestyle

What Bruce Springsteen fan wouldn't want to own the Boss's house?

His New Jersey mansion isn't on the market,

But, until a few weeks ago, this house was.

Bruce grew up in Freehold, N.J., but he rented the cottage at 7 1/2 West End Court, in Long Branch, on the Jersey Shore, in 1974 and '75. It was here that he wrote Born to Run (the song and much of the album of that name). In a 2005 documentary packaged with the 30th anniversary edition of Born to Run, Springsteen stops outside the house to reminisce.

So when the house came on the market, for $299,000, Kim McDermott, a Springsteen fan who lives in nearby Little Falls, and two partners, Gerard Ferrara and Ryan DeCarolis, couldn't resist making an offer. They ended up paying $280,000, which McDermott says is probably "a bit more" than the house would have gone for without the Bruce connection." (Realtor Susan McLaughlin wisely touted the house's rock pedigree on her website.)
Without Springsteen, the two-bedroom cottage, with about 800 square feet and a tiny porch, might have been a teardown, given its almost-oceanfront location.

The Jersey Shore has served as both inspiration and launching pad for Springsteen, who was recently honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington by a crowd that included President Barack Obama and the comedian and fellow Jersey boy Jon Stewart.

One of the songs Springsteen wrote in the Long Branch house is Thunder Road, which begins with the lyric "the screen door slams . . ."

"The house has a little screen door," says McDermott, who can't help hearing Bruce's words whenever she visits the property.

Right now, DeCarolis is living in the house. But because of its commercial zoning ("it's in an odd little area, with some homes and some businesses," says McDermott), it could someday become a Springsteen museum.

For millions of Bruce fans, that would be a chance to relive a little of the Glory Days.

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Architects See the Light

Fred Bernstein — 2010-01-01T09:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design

Why does anyone become an architect? It's a terrible profession, even in good times. And these aren't good times.

But for some, they're God times. There's nothing new about architects creating to honor their creator. Antonio Gaudi called his Sagrada Familia in Barcelona the "last great sanctuary of Christendom," and became world-famous for his efforts to complete it.

Others toil in obscurity. But now a film director and a researcher have documented the lives of five men who feel compelled by God to build large structures.

Their film, God's Architects, profiles the Reverend H. D. Dennis, a 92-year-old World War II veteran who transformed his wife's small grocery store in Vicksburg, Mississippi, into a fantasia of towers and bridges. And Leonard Knight, who has turned a mountainside in Southern California into a kind of diorama -- including a three-story adobe igloo -- that renders God's mercy in three dimensions.

In 2005, Emilie Taylor, then a graduate student at the Tulane School of Architecture, received a grant to study visionary builders -- the brick-and-mortar version of "outsider artists." After she shared her findings with the (aptly named) filmmaker Zachary Godshall, he began work on the documentary, which has been making the film festival circuit. Consider it a companion piece to the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, in which Milton Wexler, a prominent psychoanalyst who counted Gehry among his famous clients, pontificated about the roots of creativity.

Wexler's patients thought they, too, were speaking to a divine presence. Only their God passed away in 2007.

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Real Estate Is Going Great Guns

Fred Bernstein — 2009-12-24T11:45:00 00:00

Filed under: News

The challenge for realtors, in sluggish markets, is getting customers to pull the (proverbial) trigger.

But Ben Edsall, a Kansas City realtor, may have the solution: his "Buy a house, get a gun" promotion.

Edsall's firm, Turn-Key Properties LLC, is offering customers vouchers, worth $250, redeemable at The Olathe Gun Shop. (The offer is valid on sales of property in Kansas of $100,000 or more.)

"I love guns, I love real estate. I've found a way to combine them," Edsall told the Kansas City Real Estate Examiner.
Edsall had already been offering a 1% discount to NRA members, which he described as "a way to say thank you for being our client and maybe help along another part of our economy, the gun dealers." Now the part of our economy that needs the help is real estate. (Guns sales are at historic highs.)

According to his website, Edsall is a graduate of the Kansas City Crime-Free Drug-Free Multi-Housing Program and the Kansas City Citizens Police Academy.

If you list a rental property with him, he says, he'll use his law enforcement skills to screen out potential tenants who may be doing drugs. And if a tenant does make, sell, or use drugs, he says, his "testimony is usually all that is required" to have the tenant evicted, given his ability to pick up "the smell of narcotics in the unit."

But there's no indication he'll show up at the unit with his gun -- unless you count the sign in his office, which warns, "We don't dial 911."

Who said realtors don't mean business?

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The Roof of All Evils

Fred Bernstein — 2009-12-17T17:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design

I hate to kick a man while he's down.

But Tiger Woods has made me really mad.

Not his accident/affairs--his roof.

One thing we know about Tiger (from all the photos of his house) is that he's got a lot of roof. Enough for a couple of big-box stores, with an elementary school or two thrown in.

And what isn't on those acres and acres of roof? A single solar panel, that's what.

Woods lives near Orlando, in the Sunshine State. Orlando's tourist site advertises that it gets 300 days of sunshine a year. All that sunlight could be turning Tiger's roof into a clean, silent, efficient power plant.

Compare this to a home by David Wilson, an architect who lives in Stinson Beach, near San Francisco. Wilson's house is only 1,400 square feet -- he has, at most, one-tenth as much roof as Tiger Woods. Plus, Stinson gets a lot of fog.

But Wilson installed about 400 feet of solar panels on his roof. (They're also known as PV, or photovoltaic, panels.)
Those panels provide enough electricity to run Wilson's entire house. "We're zeroed out," Wilson told me. Some days, he even sells electricity back to the power company.

The panels cost Wilson about $40,000, which is a lot of money. He figures it will take him 10 to 15 years to make back the cost of the panels.

Those up-front costs are a problem for some people -- but not for Tiger Woods (who has reportedly spent up to $100 million on real estate in the last few years).

Right now, there are no laws requiring solar panels. But when you've got that much roof, and not a single PV panel, it's a crying shame.

Frankly, I wish he'd hold a press conference about solar power.

What happened in his house is his business; what happens ON his house is everybody's business.

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The New Real Estate Bubble

Fred Bernstein — 2009-12-17T15:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design

You've probably walked by the Hirshhorn museum without knowing it. On the Mall in Washington, surrounded by the picturesque Smithsonian Castle, with its bright red turrets, and the National Archives, with its dramatic classical facade, the Hirshhorn tends to fade into the background.

Despite its distinctive donut shape, the Hirshhorn's placement (behind a sculpture garden) and its overall demeanor (gray and windowless) make it easy to miss.

But the museum's new director -- who hails from L.A. and helped build that city's dramatic Disney Concert Hall -- has a plan to enliven the building's architecture.

At his request, the New York architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro have designed an inflatable "bubble" that could be inserted into the Hirshhorn's donut hole. Two refrigerator-size air pumps would inflate the sky-blue structure, which would bulge out the top of the building's courtyard. The space inside could be used for temporary exhibitions and performances. The New York Times hailed the project as "an uplifting work of civic architecture. Other architects have criticized it, for using a gimmick to gussy up a mid-century building that should be appreciated for its own modernist merits.

Inflatable rooms have been around for years, but they're usually touted for oddball purposes, like dodging pathogens or partying like it's 2009.

Millions of Americans are used to blowing up mattresses when guests come to visit -- recently we examined how Aerobeds are making convertible sofas obsolete. But how about blowing up an entire guest room? Something a little sleeker than the inflatable "castles" that people rent for children's birthday parties.

Indeed, with architects like Diller Scofidio and Renfro -- whose design for The High Line in New York has won rave reviews -- on the case, inflatable rooms may become stylish.

Someday, the phrase "housing bubble" could have a whole new meaning.

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Please Don't Buy Me This for Christmas!

Fred Bernstein — 2009-12-11T19:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design,Lifestyle

Cooking with fire - one of mankind's great inventions - isn't good enough for some 21st-century foodies.

The Sous Vide Supreme, which coddles food in lukewarm water, is finding its way into home kitchens, according to The New York Times.

Here are some of the advantages of Sous Vide cooking:

1) You'll need to start Sunday dinner on Friday - cooking in warm water can take up to 48 hours.

2) Food has to be sealed into plastic bags before being submerged. The New York Times' Julia Moskin endured "splashing, scalding and profanity" before getting it right.

3) The method carries "an edge of risk, because vacuum sealing creates an anaerobic environment that can silently breed" botulism spores, according to The Times.

And what's the payoff for all this? The ability to cook meat that emerges "unnervingly pale and soft," according to Moskin. That's why most Sous Vide cooks finish off their dishes on the grill or in an oven. (Why not just start on the grill or oven?)

Like I said, cooking with fire was one of mankind's great inventions.

Oh, and the price tag for the boxy counter top device? About $500. For that, you can feed 10 children in Malawi for a year. But don't try doing it Sous Vide.

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Tiger's Tragic House?

Fred Bernstein — 2009-12-10T17:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Design,News

I don't know what drove Tiger Woods out of his house at 2:30 a.m. But I'm guessing the house was part of the problem.

Have you seen the bird's-eye photos of Tiger's lair? It's a behemoth -- there's enough roof for an airplane hangar -- except it has more angles than an origami caterpillar.

The man is known for fluidity, grace -- but his house is overbearing, overwrought. It's not a golfer; it's a linebacker (on steroids).

But it isn't the style of the house that may have sent Tiger fleeing. It's the agglomeration of space into a single volume. Everyone has been in one of these McMansions -- vast, but without the feeling that you can ever get away. Huge archways link every space to every other space. No room feels separate or enclosed.

Tiger, like lots of Americans, has plenty of square footage -- but no real room to breathe.

If he had lived in a compound house (shown below), he might have just slammed one door, then opened another, getting away (from whoever or whatever was bugging him) while staying off the road.

Compound houses are houses made of multiple small buildings. One building might have a living room and famly room. Another might contain the master bedroom. Still others, the kitchen and dining area, the children's bedrooms, media rooms. The parts of a compound house may be connected by covered walkways, or even enclosed walkways depending on climate. But despite the connectors, the pieces feel like discrete buildings.

The architectural impulse is centrifugal (the force that makes things spread out), not centripetal (the force that concentrates things in the middle). Think of it as a kind of family village.

Compound houses hark back to a time when women were in the main house, and men had shops or barns to work in.

If Tiger needed to slam a door, and leave the house -- so be it. But with a compound house, he could have slammed one door, then gone right ahead and opened another door. Without ever getting in his car.

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